My Sister’s Keeper (Jodi Picoult)
"Anna is not sick,
but she might as well be. By age 13, she has undergone countless
surgeries, transfusions and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can
fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of
preimplementation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone
marrow match for Kate–a life and a role she has never
challenged…until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to
question who she truely is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always
been defined in terms of her sister. So, Anna makes a decision that for
most would be unthinkable–a decision that will tear her family apart
and possibly have fatal consequences for the sister she loves."
Jodi
Picoult’s novels are more than interesting. They do not draw you into
other worlds, but makes you take a look into things that are either
taken for granted or people don’t dare to look at.
In this part
romance, part courtroom thriller and part social commentary, Picoult
drives her readers through a family’s tale of dysfunction, betrayal and
redemption.
What enticed me in picking up the book "My Sister’s
Keeper" was it reminded me of a CSI episode that I watched where the
"victim" was a girl, conceived the way Anna was, and whose seeming sole
purpose was to give body parts to his brother with cancer. But "My
Sister’s Keeper" is far more complicated than the kidnap-murder case of
CSI that I watched.
Here is a story of a family who battles with
death every single day for 14 years and is in the midst of moral and
ethical dilemma with regards to their two daughters. The story is not
just told through the eyes of Anna, the "giving" daughter who seemed to
only exist in relation to her sister Kate, but as well as through the
eyes of Brian, the father, a firefighter who can save everyone else’s
life but his daughters’; Sara, the mother, a former lawyer that opted
to just represent her children everywhere, every time, even in the court
of death; Jesse, the brother, frustrated for not being worthy to save
his sister and thus became obsessed with controlling something as
uncontrollable as fire; and Campbell and Julia, Anna’s lawyer and
guardian ad litem, once lovers and now are caught in the Fitzgerald’s
war with Kate’s leukemia and Anna’s struggle to still be part of that
war without being the only weapon.
Once I started reading the
book, I wasn’t able to put it down. I couldn’t wait to know what
happened to the characters. Picoult has written these characters in a
way that there was no room for me to be judgmental of them, but a lot
of space for hopes for them to grow.
I hoped for Kate to get the
organ she needed to live, yet I also hoped for Anna to gain control of
her body. I hoped for Jesse to feel he’s worth something even if it
didn’t mean being a donor to his sister. I hoped for Brian and Sara to
keep their family intact and not lose any of their daughters. And I
hoped for Campbell and Julia to workout their issues from the past, not
just for themselves but for Anna.
I had all these hopes for the
characters, but the ending of the book was something far different from
what I hoped for and nothing that I expected.
